We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 June 2014
During the first half of the fourteenth century titles granted by English religious houses replaced patrimonial titles and titles granted by laymen and women as the predominant titles for unbeneficed secular clergy in most dioceses. This probably reflects the greater security an undying corporation provided for the ordaining bishop; but none of the various kinds of title as described in episcopal registers can necessarily be taken at face value and in practice ordinands were not expected to depend on the grantors of their titles for their future careers or for long-term financial support.
1 Dictionnaire de droit canonique, ed. R. Naz, Paris 1965, vii. 1279–81, citing ecumenical and other councils from Chalcedon to Lateran III: X. 3. 5. 4 and 16 (Corpus iuris canonici, ed. E. Friedberg, Leipzig 1879–81, ii. 465, 469). The requirement for titles was incorporated into thirteenth-century English synodical statutes from the Council of Westminster of 1200 onwards, and titles from religious, beneficed secular clerks and laymen and women are referred to: Councils and synods, i/2. ed. D. Whitelock, M. Brett and C. N. L. Brooke, Oxford 1981, 1064; ii/1, ed. F. M. Powicke and C. R. Cheney, Oxford 1964, 248, 373–4; ii/2, ed. F. M. Powicke and C. R. Cheney, Oxford 1964, 1001. There are several examples of attempts to enforce episcopal responsibility in England and Wales in this period, for example Registrum Roberti Winchelsey Cantuariensis archiepiscopi, AD 1294–1313, ed. R. Graham (CYS, 1952–6), ii. 782, 1046–7, 1088–9; The register of John de Stratford, bishop of Winchester, 1323–1333, ed. R. M. Haines (Surrey Record Society, 2010), i. 605; cf Registrum Henrici Woodlock, diocesis Wintoniensis, AD 1305–1316, ed. A. W. Goodman (CYS, 1940–1), ii. 779.
2 This was issued to men with a substantial income and the expectation of a benefice in the near future, and may initially have been a dispensation rather than an alternative form of title: X. 3. 5. 4 (Corpus iuris canonici, ii. 465).
3 Councils and synods, ii/1, 248. For details of registers see Smith, D. M., Guide to bishops' registers of England and Wales, London 1981Google Scholar, and Supplement (CYS, 2004), and discussion in Robinson, D., ‘Clerical recruitment in England, 1282–1348’, in Saul, N. (ed.), Fourteenth Century England V, Woodbridge 2008, 52–77Google Scholar at pp. 53–5. The summary of dates covers surviving lists to 1348.
4 Care is needed in using this evidence: when a man was ordained to one of the three orders in a nearby diocese during a vacancy in his own diocese his title was almost always the same as when he was ordained in his own diocese, but in some instances an ordinand appears to have decided to be ordained in a more distant diocese and to seek employment in the vicinity. In these cases his title might be typical of the diocese of his ordination, not that of his origin.
5 For studies covering more than one diocese see Bennett, H. F., ‘Medieval ordination lists in the English episcopal registers’, in Davies, J. Conway (ed.), Studies presented to Sir Hilary Jenkinson, London 1957, 20–34Google Scholar, and Swanson, R. N., ‘Titles to orders in medieval English episcopal registers’, in Mayr-Harting, H. and Moore, R. I. (eds), Studies in medieval history presented to R. H. C. Davis, London 1985, 233–45Google Scholar. For individual dioceses in the fourteenth century see Rose, R. K., ‘Priests and patrons in the fourteenth-century diocese of Carlisle’, in Baker, D. (ed.), The Church in town and countryside (SCH xvi, 1979), 207–18Google Scholar; J. A. H. Moran, ‘Clerical recruitment in the diocese of York, 1340–1530: data and commentary’, this Journal xxxiv (1983), 19–54; and Robinson, D., ‘Ordinations of secular clergy in the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield, 1322–1358’, Archives xvii (1985), 3–21Google Scholar.
6 The present study primarily covers these three kinds of title, together with chantries. Only a small number of titles are specifically stated to have been granted by the ordinand's father, mother or brother.
7 Bennett, ‘Medieval ordination lists’, 28–9; Thompson, A. Hamilton, The English clergy and their organisation in the later Middle Ages, Oxford 1947, 143Google Scholar.
8 The register of Walter Giffard, lord archbishop of York, 1266–1279, ed. W. Brown (Surtees Society, 1904), 187–98; The register of Thomas de Cantilupe, bishop of Hereford (AD 1275–1282), transcribed R. G. Griffiths and intro. W. W. Capes (Cantilupe Society, 1906; CYS, 1907), 299–312. Quotations from older editions of registers have sometimes been given with more modern punctuation or spelling, and modern forms of place names have been adopted where they could be identified with reasonable probability.
9 Reg. Giffard (York), 190–1.
10 Ibid. 192–3.
11 Ibid. 193.
12 Ibid. 195.
13 Ibid. 196–7.
14 In addition sixty-two titles were not stated or cannot be categorised; the ninety-six patrimonial titles amount to almost two-thirds of known titles. Roger de Penbrugge was ordained deacon in 1277 ‘ad titulum plene pixidis litterarum’: Reg. Cantilupe, 300. Cantilupe's Hereford ordinations and the slightly later Worcester ordinations of Godfrey Giffard are discussed in Townley, S., ‘Unbeneficed clergy in the thirteenth century: two English dioceses’, in Studies in clergy and ministry in medieval England (Borthwick Studies in History i, 1991), 38–64Google Scholar.
15 Reg. Cantilupe, 305.
16 Ibid. 311.
17 Ibid. 310.
18 Ibid. 299, 301–2.
19 Ibid. 305, 310.
21 Ibid. 305.
22 Some well-endowed vicars were responsible for providing chaplains to serve in their parish but neither Newent nor Bromyard vicarages reached the minimum assessment level of £4 in the 1291 Taxatio ecclesiastica.
23 Reg. Cantilupe, 301, 312.
24 In Worcester, titles are given with any regularity only from the beginning of the fourteenth century but there is one ordination, at Michaelmas 1291, when the titles of most of the subdeacons are stated; the great majority of these are patrimonial: Episcopal registers, diocese of Worcester: register of Bishop Godfrey Giffard, September 23rd 1268 to August 15th 1301, ed. J. W. Willis Bund (WHS, 1898–1902), 396–401.
25 Evidence of Lincoln men ordained in Canterbury in the 1280s suggests that religious house titles were already the norm at that time.
26 Evidence of Canterbury men ordained in Winchester diocese and at ordinations by Reynolds at St Paul's cathedral in 1309 and 1311, when he was bishop of Worcester, seem to place religious house predominance as early as 1309. In Winchester titles of Canterbury ordinands divided equally between religious house and patrimonial titles in 1307–8, but from 1312 religious house titles predominated heavily (1312–15, thirteen out of eighteen; 1316–18, twenty-four out of twenty-nine), and after 1318 almost all titles were from religious houses. At Reynolds's ordinations in St Paul's sixteen out of twenty titles of Canterbury men were from religious houses.
27 The evidence is not quite straightforward: the only London ordinands in Canterbury between 1297 and 1314 whose titles were recorded (four in 1303 and one in 1305) possessed patrimonial titles (three titles were not recorded). When John Kirkby ordained in the diocese in 1340 all the London diocese ordinands had religious house titles except for one with a title from St Martin le Grand collegiate church: The register of John Kirkby, bishop of Carlisle, 1332–1352, and the register of John Ross, bishop of Carlisle, 1325–32, ed. R. L. Storey (CYS, 1993–5), i. 531.
28 A number of letters dimissory, including statements as to the men's titles, were entered into Bishop Grandisson's register in September and October 1331, when forty-six of the fifty-five titles were from lay grantors: The register of John de Grandisson, bishop of Exeter (AD 1327–1369), ed. F. C. Hingeston-Randolph, London–Exeter 1894–9, ii. 626–34. By the mid-1330s a majority of the few Exeter men ordained in Worcester had titles from religious houses, and when Exeter men appear in Hereford and Winchester in the 1340s this is also the case.
29 This includes titles which stated a sum of money but not its source, which was probably in most cases patrimonial or lay.
30 The register of Thomas de Cobham, bishop of Worcester, 1317–1327, ed. E. H. Pearce (WHS, 1930), 157–8, 165–6.
31 Calendar of the register of Adam de Orleton, bishop of Worcester, 1327–1333, ed. R. M. Haines (WHS; Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1980), 1.
32 Ely titles in Canterbury were all patrimonial until 1316 and evidence of letters dimissory in Rochester and Winchester would place the change to titles being predominantly but not exclusively from religious houses in about 1320.
33 Two-thirds were still patrimonial in the 1340s. The published register does not distinguish between secular ordinands with titles from religious houses and those ordinands who were ‘religious’, ie monks, regular canons or friars, but the ordinand's status is usually clear from the context and the numbers involved are small. Religious house titles slowly became predominant in the course of the 1350s and 1360s: Dohar, W. J., The Black Death and pastoral leadership: the diocese of Hereford in the fourteenth century, Philadelphia 1995, 114Google Scholar. The evidence for Bath and Wells is too slight to draw significant conclusions but, for men whose titles were from within that diocese, lay titles seem to have predominated until the 1330s.
34 After 1324 the few men ordained in Coventry and Lichfield with non-religious house titles seem to have invited suspicion. Also, probably in about 1326, a letter ‘pro quodam presbitero’, presumably intended as a form, was entered in Northburgh's register ‘de diversis litteris’, requiring Haughmond Abbey to support a priest to whom they had given a title and who had been reduced to poverty by thieves: Robinson, ‘Coventry and Lichfield’, 14. York titles before 1347 included many of a sum of money which was probably granted by laymen. At the first ordination after the change either the subdeacons were marshalled or at least the lists as entered in the register were arranged by grantor house. The titles were retained in the registry: the usual form is ‘penes registrum remanentem ad omnes sacros ordines’. The great minsters of the diocese continued to grant titles in considerable numbers, mainly to their own clergy.
35 The Welsh dioceses appear to have retained patrimonial and lay titles except for some of the men from eastern parts of the southern dioceses of St Davids and Llandaff. The few Scottish ordinands to be found in English registers are mainly men from Annandale and neighbouring parts of the diocese of Glasgow ordained in Carlisle in the 1290s with titles from laymen including local landholders and a burgess of Annan. Welsh ordinands who were ordained in south-eastern English dioceses often had titles local to the diocese in which they were ordained. There is one similar Scots example, Robert Merke of Glasgow diocese, ordained priest in Winchester in 1347 to a title from Ivychurch (Salisbury diocese): The register of William de Edington, bishop of Winchester, 1346–66, ed. S. F. Hockey (Hampshire Record Series, 1986–7), ii. 740.
36 More than half of the ordinands in the south-west appear to have moved from one grantor to another, and some to three different grantors, in the course of proceding through the orders. This is much less the case in Carlisle and Durham. For grantors of lay titles see Robinson, ‘Coventry and Lichfield’, 12–13.
37 Reg. Giffard (Worcester), 289; The register of William de Geynesburgh, bishop of Worcester, 1302–1307, ed. J. W. Willis Bund (WHS, 1907–29), 155.
38 For Lechlade see The register of the diocese of Worcester during the vacancy of the see, usually called registrum sede vacante, 1301–1435, ed. J. W. Willis Bund (WHS, 1897), 23. For Andover see Reg. Woodlock, ii. 858, 865, 876. Robert de Sandeby from York diocese (Saundby in Nottinghamshire) was given his title as subdeacon by the burgesses of Evesham in 1306 and Walter de Foxcote (Gloucs), ordained in his native Worcester diocese as subdeacon in 1304 to a patrimonial title, was ordained priest by letters dimissory in Winchester diocese in 1310 to a title from the community of Taunton, which was in Bath and Wells diocese but was a manor of the bishops of Winchester: Reg. Geynesburgh, 166 (Sandeby), 88 (Foxcote); Reg. Woodlock, ii. 835 (Foxcote). Robert de Walton of Lincoln diocese was ordained deacon and priest in Ely diocese to a title of five marks from the community of Flint in St Asaph diocese: Register of Simon Montacute, bishop of Ely, CUL, EDR, G/1/1, fos 108v (bis), 111v.
39 The relationship between the use of ‘presentation’ and ‘title’ is complex, but in brief there were five principal uses of ‘presentation’. The archdeacon and other examiners presented the candidates whom they had approved, where ‘presented’ may be a synonym for ‘examined’ or, in Canterbury, indicate that the candidate came from the jurisdiction of the archdeacon and not the archbishop's immediate jurisdiction: The register of John Pecham, archbishop of Canterbury, 1279–1292, ed. F. N. Davis and others (vol. i) and D. L. Douie (vol. ii) (CYS, 1908–69), i. 190–2, 212–13, 226–9. Bishops present ordinands to another bishop whom they have authorised to ordain in their diocese: The register of Walter Reynolds, bishop of Worcester, 1308–1313, ed. R. A. Wilson (WHS, 1927; Dugdale Society, 1928), 103–4, 129. Religious houses in their letters of title present the ordinand to the bishop. Presentation is found frequently as the standard term in the earlier ordination lists, sometimes together with ‘title’, but is increasingly replaced by ‘to the title’. Lastly, ‘present’ is used in cases where there seems to be some measure of support for or testimony to the title: The register of Walter Langton, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, 1296–1321, ed. J. B. Hughes (CYS, 2001–7), ii. 1320, 1321, 1326 (Richard de Fulschawe); ii. 1316, 1318, 1319 (Alan Snel of Prees); ii. 1319, 1328; Register of Roger Northburgh, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, Lichfield Record Office, B/A/1/1, fo. 144v (Robert de Seckington); The register of John de Halton, bishop of Carlisle A. D. 1292–1324, ed. W. N. Thompson (CYS; Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, record or chartulary series, 1913), i. 38 (Alan de Camberton), 118 (William Bereman, whose five-mark title was granted by Alan de Haverington but who was presented by Sir William de Mulcaster), 247 (Adam de Otley, patrimonial title and presentation of prior of Wetheral). Walter de Wyrkesal, ordained to a title of five marks from William de Buskeby, with the prior of Guisborough ‘per litteras suas testimonium perhibente’, is probably not significantly different: ibid. ii. 201.
40 Registrum Thome Charlton, episcopi Herefordensis, AD MCCCXXVII–MCCCXLIV, ed. W. W. Capes (Cantilupe Society, 1912; CYS, 1913), 93–202; Registrum Johannis de Trillek, episcopi Herefordensis, A. D. MCCCXLIV–MCCCLXI, ed. J. H. Parry (Cantilupe Society, 1912; CYS, 1913), 410–80.
41 Reg. Charlton, 96, 100 (Brinsop); 98, 104 (Pipe); 99 (Lydney); 99 (Newent); 102, 111 (Holme Lacy); 107 (Withington); 115 (Richards Castle); 121 (Bodenham); 124 (Lugwardine); 136, 141 (Wigmore); 141 (St Martins); 145 (Norton Canon); 145 (Leintwardine); 147 (John de Knyghtestone, to a chantry of St Mary; the location of the chantry is not specified but it is probable that it was in Knighton); 150 (Dilwyn); 165, 170 (Churchnam); 183 (Cleobury Mortimer); 180 (Clifton); 95, 99 (Holy Cross, Lydney); Reg. Trilleck, 434, 462 (Sutton Sturmy [Sutton in the parish of Tenbury]).
42 Reg. Charlton, 113, 119, 124 (John Bach); 96, 132 (St Nicholas, Hereford); 117 (chantry in St Nicholas in gift of Bartholomew Spicer); 103 (Kyre Wyard); 110 (Willey); 179, 183, 186 (Eau Withington); 196 (Fownhope). In addition, a number of men were ordained to the chantry at Grosmont which was in the gift of Dore Abbey.
43 The chantry title of Roger son of William Roules of Norton as subdeacon becomes a title of 51s. from the parish of Norton Canon and then a title ‘from the parish of Norton’; cf John son of John le Budel, subdeacon to the title of the Blessed Virgin of Dilwyn, deacon to a title from the parish of Dilwyn and priest to a patrimonial title: Reg. Charlton, 145, 151, 157 (Roules); 150, 156, 162 (Budel).
44 These are mostly four marks but four and a half marks and 50s. are also found: ibid. 144 (Holmer); 145, 152, 158 (Ashford Carbonell); 139 (ti. pa.) and 146 (Longhope); 139, 146, 153 (Richards Castle); 184 (Old Radnor); 161 (Newnham); 166 (Waterdine); 172 (Tidenham); 179, 183, 186 (St Peter's, Hereford).
45 Reg. Trilleck, 433, 451, 461. Other examples are Robert Russell of Allensmore and Elyas de Burley: ibid. 433, 451–2, 461, 479. To a very limited extent the changes may reflect changes of scribal policy at different ordinations. Fifteen men were ordained subdeacon to titles from members of the laity in March 1346, of whom thirteen were later ordained deacon (twelve in the following June) to a patrimonial title and at least eight later became priest to a patrimonial title: ibid. 433–7, 451–4.
46 When Archbishop Winchelsey conferred the chantry of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Pagham, on William Crol of Pagham on the presentation of the parishioners ‘ut moris est’, he referred to the laudable testimony as to William's conversation in the vill of Pagham and his origin there: Reg. Winchelsey, i. 33. The Hereford evidence covers only 1277–80 and the 1330s and 1340s and most of the chantry titles occur in relation to only a single ordinand. It is possible therefore that they represent the first establishment of these chantries, the ordinand having been identified in advance of the erection of the chantry. There are examples of this when chantries were founded by individual laymen: for an example from Newcastle under Lyme see Robinson, ‘Clerical recruitment’, 73–4. If a young man were identified at an early stage as appropriate to serve a proposed altar there would be time for him to undergo an ‘apprenticeship’ with the rector, vicar or other priests serving the church. On the other hand, St Mary's chantry, Newent, is recorded from the mid-thirteenth century: VCH, Gloucestershire, xii. 85–6. The ordination of William Petyt of Gloucester as subdeacon, deacon and priest between March and May 1328 to the title of a chantry of St Mary in the church of St Mary, Grace Lane, Gloucester, suggests that there was some need for urgency in filling the altar, perhaps following the death or resignation of the preceding celebrant. Petyt was ordained deacon by Bishop Orleton at a small ordination on Holy Saturday at his manor of Beaumes in Berkshire and, with letters dimissory, priest by Bishop Charlton of Hereford: Reg. Orleton, 1, 2; Reg. Charlton, 100.
47 In the East Riding a number of existing chapels acquired formally-ordained chantry functions: Molescroft (in St John Beverley), Octon (in Thwing), Wansford (in Nafferton); cf Lowthorpe, where the parish church was subsumed into a collegiate chantry foundation: The Register of William Melton, archbishop of York, 1317–40, vi, ed. D. Robinson (CYS, 2011), 390, 486, 535, 604.
48 Register of William Zouche, archbishop of York, Borthwick Institute for Archives, York, Reg. 10A, fos 2, 5; Registrum Palatinum Dunelmense, ed. T. D. Hardy (RS, 1873–8), iii. 140. John le Vavasour was a local gentleman and may have been offering his support to the title.
49 Reg. Zouche, ii, fos 18, 18a, 18b.
50 Many of the York men who were also ordained in Carlisle or Durham were ordained there to titles from laymen even when they were recorded in the York lists with simply a ‘5 marks’ title.
51 None of the houses of men in Lincoln diocese which presented the greatest numbers of secular ordinands in the 1290s were among those presenting the greatest numbers of monks or canons for ordination, and the seven houses which presented the greatest numbers of their own monks and canons presented only twenty-nine secular ordinands in all, sixteen of them presented by Croxton Abbey: this is based on the table in The rolls and register of Bishop Oliver Sutton, 1280–1299, ed. R. M. T. Hill (Lincoln Record Society, 1962–86), vii. 124–7, although the totals of secular ordinands are my own, counting individual ordinands rather than ordinations.
52 One of the men ordained to a title from Sopwell was Richard Gold of Tynemouth. Tynemouth Priory was a dependency of St Albans Abbey, and the nunnery must have been acting on behalf of the abbey: Reg. Zouche, iim, fo. 25v. Two ordinands in Worcester in 1328 were described as being ordained to a title from Dudston hospital at the presentation of Llanthony-by-Gloucester priory: Richard de Molend’ of Painswick and Peter de Benetham: Reg. Orleton, 1, 9. There is evidence of the continued use of St Mary des Pres by St Albans and Dudston by Llanthony in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries: Registrum Johannis Whethamstede, Willelmi Albon, et Willelmi Wallingforde, abbatum monasterii Sancti Albani, ii. ed. H. T. Riley (RS, 1873), 90–1; A calendar of the registers of the priory of Llanthony by Gloucester, 1457–1466, 1501–1524, ed. J. Rhodes (Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, Gloucestershire Record Series, 2002), for example no. 132, pp. 63–4. It is tempting to speculate whether other hospitals and small houses which gave titles were acting at the instigation of, or with the consent or support of, a larger house: for example, St Michael's priory, Stamford, ‘was from the earliest times subject to the abbey of Peterborough to a remarkable extent’: VCH, Northants., ii. 98.
53 Register of Robert Wyvill, bishop of Salisbury, Wiltshire Record Office, fos 22 (Oter), 13v (Ore), 19 (Pomeray), 19v (atte Style), 18v (Gylot), 19 (Elyne), 31v (Malmesbury), 20v (Wydecomb), 19 (le Lord), 33v (de la Mare). For the chantry of St Mary, founded by Stephen and Maud le Criour in Fisherton Anger church in 1324, see VCH, Wilts., vi. 189–90. Men ordained in dioceses other than their own with letters dimissory sometimes reveal the lay title underlying a religious house title: Robinson, ‘Coventry and Lichfield’, 14. See also Swanson, ‘Titles to orders’, 243. There is evidence that diocesan officers sometimes enquired into the reality underlying a religious house title. In Canterbury, Thomas Tony of Bramber was ordained deacon in September 1315 to a patrimonial title and priest in December to a title from Tortington, when he swore that he would bring a sufficient title before the feast of the Purification next: Register of Walter Reynolds, archbishop of Canterbury, Lambeth Palace Library, fos 173, 175. Other Tortington titles were not queried.
54 Reg. Giffard (York), 190; Staffordshire Record Office, D593/A/1/35/15.
55 Registrum Simonis de Gandavo, diocesis Sarisberiensis, AD 1297–1315, ed. C. T. Flower and M. C. B. Dawes (CYS, 1934), ii. 862.
56 Reg. Woodlock, ii. 771–2, 778. Thomas Reyner's title is transcribed and other titles found in the Sutherland archive at Stafford are briefly described in Robinson, ‘Coventry and Lichfield’, 11, 18.
57 In some cases values increase between the three orders but this is never systematic.
58 Numbers generally seem not to have varied much over time. The only significant exception to this is Lincoln, where numbers of ordinands in the 1290s are considerably lower than numbers in the 1340s and the increase seems to have occurred by at least the 1320s. The low numbers in the 1290s may be related to a recent tightening-up on titles; numbers of ordinands in Coventry and Lichfield dipped briefly in the 1320s at the time of the move to religious house titles: Robinson, ‘Clerical recruitment’, esp. p. 62.
59 Eleven Broadwas men were ordained between 1283 and 1339, seven of them between 1305 and 1316, a remarkable number for a village taxed at only £1 4s. 0d. in the 1334 subsidy.
60 In Ely, where 73% of ordinands had religious house titles and where surnames and places of origin are stated for almost all ordinands, about 70% of those ordinands who bore the same surname as a payer of more than 12d. in the 1327 subsidy for their town or village had religious house titles and 30% had patrimonial titles, 75% of those who bore the same surname as a payer of up to 12d. had religious house titles and 25% had patrimonial titles, while 80% of those ordinands whose surnames do not appear had religious house titles and 20% had patrimonial titles. This suggests that men with patrimonial titles may have been slightly more likely to come from wealthier families, but the numbers are small and the safest conclusion is that no major distinction can be drawn: Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely: lay subsidy for the year 1327: names of the taxpayers in every parish, ed. C. H. Evelyn White, n.p. 1910: my calculations. In Worcester the chronological and topographical range, together with some incompleteness in the subsidy and probable differences in approach to assessment in some parts of the diocese, leave conclusions even less certain but again there is no obvious distinction.
61 We can trace the titles of thirty-three unbeneficed clergy. Sixteen had patrimonial titles, ten lay titles, three religious house titles and four had changed titles from one kind of title to another as they proceeded through the orders. Many of them had local names and some of the titles may conceal the reality of a title from the local community, but only two titles can be directly linked with the parishes in which the men served: William Richer of Tutbury, chaplain in Tutbury, who had been presented to his orders by the prior of Tutbury, appropriators of the benefice, and perhaps Thomas de Elford, parochial chaplain of Elford, if he was the Thomas de Elford of Eccleshall or Exhall who was presented to the subdiaconate, the only order to which he can be traced, by John de Ardern, who was patron of Elford at the time: Hughes, J. B., ‘A 1319 clergy list of the Tamworth and Tutbury deanery in the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield’, Staffordshire Studies vi (1994), 1–25Google Scholar.
62 There are examples from Barnstaple, Cowick, Launceston, Plympton, St Germans, Tavistock and Tywardreath. For Winchester see Reg. Woodlock, i. 400–1; ii. 733, 827, 833; Reg. Stratford, i. 688, 863; ii. 1474, for Chertsey Abbey; and Reg. Woodlock, i. 590–2; ii. 817, 832, 838 for Hyde Abbey. There are a few examples of a man being ordained to the title of a chantry in the gift of a religious house, sometimes within the house itself.
63 M. Gilbert de Cornubia was ordained deacon ‘ad graciam domini’ on 5 June 1311 and collated vicar of Lelant on the same day ‘post prandium’: The register of Walter de Stapledon, bishop of Exeter (AD 1307–1326), ed. F. C. Hingeston-Randolph, London– Exeter 1892, 230, 482. Bishops were increasingly turning to vicars, and especially graduate vicars, for much of the ‘hands on’ local administration of their dioceses, as rural deans, penitentiaries and men who could fulfil local commissions of enquiry: Robinson, D., Beneficed clergy in Cleveland and East Riding, 1305–1340, York 1969, 38–43Google Scholar. Oxford and Cambridge colleges appear to have granted titles to Fellows at the point at which they might reasonably expect to obtain a benefice or at least be included in a list of candidates for papal provision.
64 But see Reg. Stapledon, 253, 471, 497 (M. Gilbert de Knoville); Reg. Winchelsey, ii. 924; and Reg. Reynolds (Canterbury), fo. 25v (Ralph de Sutton).
65 In Worcester see Reg. Cobham, 52, 78, 116, 246 (Adam de Siddington); for Coventry and Lichfield see Robinson, ‘Clerical recruitment’, 73–4. The successive foundation of chantries in Chelmscote in the parish of Brailes (Warwickshire) led to five men obtaining titles from the chantry between 1323 and 1339 and to an increased number of ordinations of local men. Sir John Pountney founded his chantry college in the church of St Laurence Candlewick Street early in the reign of Edward iii: The religious houses of London and Middlesex, ed. C. M. Barron and M. Davies, London 2007, 218–20. In 1334 Hugh Duraunt from Poultney (Leics.), the village from which Sir John was named, was ordained to a title of the chapel: Registrum Hamonis Hethe, diocesis Roffensis, AD 1319–1352, ed. C. Johnson (CYS, 1934), ii. 1093.
66 Fraudulent titles appear in several registers, and both lay and religious house grantors were involved in collusion, for example Reg. Sutton, iii. 167–8, 192; Reg. Melton, vi. 149, 177, 376, 695; Reg. Trillek, 26–7. It appears that most entries of this nature, except the Lincoln ones which date from a time when Bishop Sutton may have been tightening up on titles, are from dioceses which had retained lay and patrimonial titles, but this may reflect different registration practices and not an actual difference in the extent of abuse.
67 Pipewell nunnery in Northamptonshire regularly granted titles ‘to the subdiaconate and diaconate only’. The examiners evidently did not reject them as inadequate and the episcopal scribes of both Lincoln and Coventry and Lichfield recorded them. The use of religious house titles seems to have reduced the number of ordinands who were ordained to different titles as they proceeded through the orders.
68 In the case of Ralph Alfredi of Wootton Wawen, granted a title by Alcester Abbey in 1309, the pope's requirement in 1334 that he should be given the necessities of life, nominally at least until he was provided with a suitable benefice, may have been an acceptable compromise: Reg. Reynolds (Worcester), 111; Calendar of the register of Simon Montacute, bishop of Worcester, 1334–1337, ed. R. M. Haines (WHS, 1996), 888.
69 Few peasant families could afford to endow one of their sons with five marks per year or a virgate of land for life. In the 1320s it was reasonable to assume that a man in his early twenties might well live for another twenty-five or so years. In a village community of less than 400 inhabitants producing forty-one priests in sixty-seven years, the land or income devoted to the maintenance of the men ordained, if they had only received 40s. per annum, would have come to a total of £30 per annum at any one time. The example is Upper and Lower Slaughter which, like their neighbours in eastern Gloucestershire, were exceptional in the number of ordinands that they produced; but a more typical number, perhaps half of that, would alienate property worth £15 per annum. A religious house taking responsibility for twenty priests a year at five marks might have a potential financial exposure of up to 2,500 marks per annum.
70 Calendar of entries in the papal registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland: papal letters, ed. W. H. Bliss (Public Record Office Texts and Calendars), ii. 1305–42, 26.
71 Reg. Giffard (Worcester) 99; Reg. Melton, vi. 460, 486; Reg. Gandavo, i. 141–3, 177. ‘Just as for some purposes a priest might speak for his parish, though for others their interests would be opposed, so a lord or his official was often seen as the natural representative of his tenants or subjects’: Reynolds, S., Kingdoms and communities in western Europe, 900–1300, 2nd edn, Oxford 1997, 140CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
72 There is little evidence of bishops directly permitting or forbidding the grant of titles by religious houses. Only in one case, Archbishop Reynolds's order in about 1325 to the nuns of Davington not to grant corrodies or titles (Reg. Reynolds [Canterbury], fo. 272v) has a ban on titles been so far identified, whereas injunctions against the granting of corrodies and pensions and against accepting new recruits are common. The nuns seem to have obeyed Reynolds for a time but after his death appear in the Rochester ordination lists granting titles to Canterbury ordinands. Bishop Hethe of Rochester, in his statutes for Strood hospital in 1330, forbade the hospital from granting pensions or corrodies, but permitted, with his consent, titles to holy orders along with admission of new brethren and presentations to benefices: Reg. Hethe, i. 4–5.
73 A few of the most liberal houses granted titles to men from considerably further afield and London houses, although not granting large numbers of titles, might grant them to men from a considerable distance. The suggestion that ‘the institutions acted virtually as clearing houses’ is made in Swanson, ‘Titles to orders’, 242–3. In Coventry and Lichfield Bishop Northburgh seems to have depended initially in particular on a trusted head of, successively, Tutbury Priory and Burton Abbey. Robert de Longdon came from an episcopal manor. He had been appointed by Bishop Langton to Tutbury, which was the main grantor between 1325 and 1329. In 1329 Longdon was appointed by Northburgh to Burton, which then became in turn a major grantor. The predominant grantors in the later 1320s were comparatively large houses, and smaller and poorer houses came to the fore in the 1330s: Robinson, ‘Coventry and Lichfield’, 14.
74 The dramatic changes in Coventry and Lichfield and York occurred a few years after the consecration of a new diocesan, and the translations of Reynolds from Worcester to Canterbury and Montacute from Worcester to Ely, and probably, although the evidence is less clear, of Orleton from Hereford to Worcester and then to Winchester, cannot be related to the nature of the ordination policy of their new dioceses.
75 Coventry and Lichfield and York were both large dioceses with considerable numbers of ordinands: it may be significant that once their diocesan administrations recognised the desirability of change it was implemented swiftly.
